Mac Setups: MacBook Air with a Thunderbolt Display

The MacBook Air is widely considered to be one of the best Macs ever made. It’s incredibly portable, but also powerful enough to serve as a workstation, and setups like this one sent in by Stephen V really show off the flexibility of the ultraportable Apple laptop. Combined with a Thunderbolt display, the MacBook Air can be docked and expanded into an impressive desktop machine while still retaining it’s quick grab-and-go attribute that makes it so popular with anyone on the move. Here’s what Stephen’s desk setup consists of:

Some help…. but how do you use a Macbook with the lid closed, i.e. for playing music etc from the Apple Remote app on a phone with the laptop closed over…. I’ve just never run into how to make this possible..!?

Simplicity and functionality at its best. Cleanest setup I’ve seen. I am thinking of getting the thunderbolt display aswell. @Francois, The thunderbolt display has built in speakers that are decent and way better than the one on the MBA or MBP.

Stephen, awesome setup! Very nice… I can see in the photo that your Logitech dongle is in the MBA rather than the TB USB ports. I have nearly identical setup without the stand and desk, and I wonder if you have ever tried the Performance MX Mouse dongle in the USB ports on the TB display, rather than in the MBA, because several of us have issues with that configuration that we think we’ve traced specifically to using the dongle in the TB ports. If you have an opportunity, I’d love it if you could check out the thread in the Apple support community, and share your experience! (thread URL http://goo.gl/h7UhM)